Hinterland origins : a batch-study of the birth of a lost migration period ceramic technology in Scandinavia, AD 350-450

Abstract

While sought for over a century, the birth of the distinctive bucket-shaped ceramic technology on the Scandinavian Peninsula has been overshadowed by its enigmatic senescence or ‘death’ in the sixth century AD. This omnipresent Migration Period container was in use for two centuries, from the mid-fourth to the mid-sixth centuries AD, spreading quickly and widely from the western region to the east and the far north. Its second century is better understood than the first, primarily because of the high-resolution chronology for the decades after AD 450, due to entanglements with Style I metalworking and the well-documented demise of both technologies in the wake of the AD 536–41 climatic events. But where and how did the technology emerge and spread? This comprehensive batch-study traces the origins and unravels the connectivity of the knowledge networks responsible for paste-recipes during the first century bucket-shaped technology (c.AD 350–450). Using a combined macroscopic and handheld-XRF approach that allows for large-scale analysis with high chronological resolution, we present a contextually grounded synthesis that relates the technological development to emerging nodal points of societal power during the fifth century and locates the origins of recipes in their clay- and mineral-rich hinterlands.